darling, dearest, dead
by Apathink
Summary: "I can tell you that Penryn is precisely nine feet and six inches away from me. I can continue to tell myself that she is entirely dead." Maybe it's not what you think.
1. don't know why you say goodbye

disclaimer:** entirely applicable. the little snatches of verse between segments are a few of Lemony Snicket's dedications to Beatrice Baudelaire he wrote in the dedications of **_**A Series of Unfortunate Events,**_** which i use because they are charming and macabre and i love them.**

inspiration: **i hate myself and i was listening to Davey Jones's music box on a loop and thinking of Raffryn and well it was never going to go anywhere wholesome and also did i mention Raffryn. **

**so. lets take a moment here to talk about **_**Angelfall**_**. or, to get to specifics, that **_**sucker punch to the throat**_** Ee calls an ending. **

**because, like. what.**

**subsequently this does carry my monologue merrily onward to the slight issue of there being a singularly sad lack of wishful damage control in the form of fanfic so far. i **_**looked, **_**kids. **_**i did.**_

**(quick slip in, i've never written first person PoV before, but i really loved Penryn's voice and i shall therefore quash my narratorly insecurities and – oh i hate myself – i shall wing it. oh yes.)**

_**thus.**_

* * *

_when we met my life began_

_soon afterward, yours ended_

* * *

(–_p__enryn wh_–)

It's dead outside. Night had fallen like a burial cloth over a misdiagnosed coma patient on the way to the mortuary, and the earthy sleeper had hardly put up bang or whimper about the confusion. The constant static buzz of the down pour makes its own kind of silence, and the little cottage smells like drowning dust and rotting trees.

Penryn has been dead for a while, I can tell you.

I can also tell you that her legs are bruised up with exactly twelve cuts visible through her wear-ripped jeans; I can tell you that the milky grey light melts to silver at the fringes of her silhouette cutting through the little rustic doorway; I can't tell you her expression because her hood is up, but I can assure you that she wouldn't be looking at me; I can't tell you how she's still standing because I can tell you there's a sick slick red red smile cut into her neck, but I can tell you that blood still looks unmistakably crimson in the dark, and also that it is welling from the wounds of this girl, of Penryn, as if through faulty broken pipe-veins and I can tell you her hoodie used to be blue and she used to smile with her mouth.

I can tell you that she is precisely nine feet and six inches away from me.

I can continue to tell myself that she is entirely dead.

"Hi," she says.

Of course it's Penryn.

I don't move. It's a question whether I'm breathing.

(-_do you remember who isn't Penryn isn't Penryn isn't breathing isn't anymore_-)

"Raffe." She's whispering as if she's checking to see if I'm asleep and I'm swallowing spiders, and I don't move.

A floorboard creaks under a dusty buckled bloody boot. I can tell you this because I'm sitting at the opposite wall of this tiny lonely useless human shack at two in the morning while a dead girl calmly walks toward me like it's (_-still_-) the most natural thing in the world and I can't raise my eyes above her feet.

These feet stop fifteen centimetres from my crossed and bloodless legs. The shoes are too big for the feet. This was done on purpose. I can tell you because I was there when she packed extra socks into the extra room and then sulked over the clunkiness when she had to use her innovative padding as gloves instead.

The heels click now. Gunshot.

Rock from tip-toe to heel. Tip-toe to heel. Tip-toe to-

"Raffe, are you mad at me?"

Oh.

God.

She kneels. (-_she's so cold it's like leaning into a meatlocker-)_ She does a peculiar and achingly Penryn-like thing where she splays her elbows awkwardly to the sides and ducks down, twists up her neck so she can see my face and I can't look at her. Her lips are downturned.

_(-there was no blood on her the first time either-)_ There is no blood on her now.

She touches my jaw and I want to scream. The gentle insistence of her hand lifts the head I don't remember bowing until I have to meet her eyes. Big, dark Penryn-eyes with the little corner tilts that made her look always teasing, always curious and ever such a deep shade that I never could name the actual colour but always felt the want of getting closer (-_closercloserclose_-) to try.

I'm swallowing my lungs.

She frowns that little V into her forehead. Her hand slips quietly up into my hair and I can actually feel myself go insane. (-_it's quite an anticlimax_-)

"Raffe." That voice is in my bones. "Raffe," she says, so, so soft, "do you love me?"

And she smells like the ocean and warm leather and Penryn and I am a loathsome weak and selfish ruined bastard and I breathe, I say, I gasp "_Yes_." (-_and I think I'm so sorry_-)

She rests her free hand under the dip of my collarbone. She smiles and my heart tries to beat its way through the cage of my ribs to meet her personally.

Then both her hands are around my neck and _crushing._

I, still, have the courtesy to not move.

Penryn presses her face so close in that I can feel her lips moving against my ear when she hisses, "_You're a fucking liar_."

Ah. _Ah-_

"_You killed me_. I am _dead_ because of you, this is your fault." She's crying and shuddering and I think that's it, that's all, there is nothing else, I think: _Now I'm dead, too_. "You _killed_ me, you just _killed_ me why would you _do_ that _what did I do, Raffe, Raffe_-?"

All her fingers are digging into my throat like the thing they want most in this world is to tear through skin and cartilage and gouge out the breath clogging my windpipe and I will not, will never, never move from exactly where I am.

Her hand punches through my chest and warm blood hits my face in a sticky, burning flare. It takes me a moment to realise that I felt no pain.

The blood is everywhere but the only horror is that it. Is not. Mine.

I snap open my eyes (-_when did I why did I close my eyes_-) and Penryn blinks her own big dark quizzical beautiful Penryn-gaze at me over the top of the screaming red cavity that was once her chest. The earth is vacuumed up inside the stillness of her heart and someone somewhere is screaming and someone else is pitching forwards and taking a chasm with them and who is that _screaming–_

And I'm awake so fast I leave my breath behind.

And I'm alone.

(-_and I am alone I'm alone? penryn wh_–)

* * *

_when we were together I felt breathless_

_now you are_

* * *

So, sometimes I wonder about Obi.

I mean, I don't wonder about Obi like some of the other women – and a fair few guys, because this is the apocalypse and a dreamboat is a dreamboat – tend to Wonder About Obi. I don't wonder, for example, if he's a boxers or briefs kinda man or how a background of military command would factor into the bedroom ("Thorough, yet firm," Dum-Dee always insisted with a solemn fluttering of lashes. "Like, super firm.").

I just wonder about how much effort he put into keeping me so far in both the figurative and literal dark.

Not that I have anything solid, really. But being ordered solo into no-man's land on recon for some vague maybe-angel-shaped-speck-in-the-general-direction- of-thataway for the fourth time in a month is enough to make a person a little suspicious.

In fairness, so is being in possession of what no one wants to call but clearly is an angel's sword. And so is having your paralysed body quietly handed over by a mysterious being now fondly referred to, in the way that a locally escaped serial killer would no doubt be fondly referred to, as Evil Incarnate. My mother has lately come to the conclusion that I signed a contract with The Thing That Tells to get Paige back, and hasn't exactly been quiet about her theories at base. And bearing in mind the fact that this time last year no one believed in bloodthirsty hosts of heaven whose only joy seemed to come from annihilating national landmarks… things were a little tense.

Ho hum.

If I told them I wasn't kinda wishing for a surprise landing from aforementioned beastie, I'd be a liar. Of the pants-aflame variety.

My musings break suddenly when one of my boots catches on a the peevish rise of a tree root, and I have to bite back a curse when it makes my over compensating left go skidding outwards and my arms pin-wheel awkwardly to avoid landing on my ass in the sludge. With my muddy fate narrowly avoided for the moment, I look down at my graceless almost-splits and snort to myself. I look like an over enthusiastic eight-year-old in the middle of a harsh lesson on the strategising of musical statues.

Raffe would have laughed.

Just as suddenly, I don't so much feel like smiling.

_Dammit_. The cold twist in my gut is pressed down to my stupid feet to be walked over as I right myself. I spare a moment to smudge out the obvious gouges left by my boots before moving forward and determinedly _not_ thinking about Raffe.

And especially not about the open, completely groundless, utterly unforeseeable and equally unmistakable loss that had weighed down his face the last time I'd seen it. And then I definitely wouldn't think about how much I needed to talk to him – at this fuckery of a world's earliest convenience – because my alleged death had apparently caused that expression and knowing this made me feel sick and I would very much like to straighten stuff out, thank you. Then again, alls that really needed to happen was a chance encounter on the street and/or any makeshift battlefield, where I could maybe just wave a little and set things straight while happily avoiding any awkward conversations about these supposed feeling-type-things that, apparently, _were_ under his angelic capability.

Yup. Waving would be perfect.

Maybe I'd even toss him a saucy little click-and-point, depending on my mood.

Of course, I'm sure you understand that this is my life on show here. I'm super sure you, unlike myself, will have already guessed that I would obviously not be looking to find him when I do.

And when I hack, stomping and cussing, through a thicket only to have the wind pull a snatch-and-grab with all the oxygen in my body, I'm sure you and the rest of the universe is having a good giggle at ol' Penryn's expense.

Raffe is ten feet away from me.

He's wearing solid, dusty army pants and solid boots and a solid enough caking of mud over his body that someone might walk right past him – he would almost blend in with the world, if not for the spined, leathery black hooks of wings at his back. And even with this helpful hint, I have to do double, triple-takes to assure myself I'm not hallucinating. When my spasmodic blinking is done with, Raffe remains resolutely solid and there. In fact, Raffe is absolutely still.

I more than most have a decent estimate of an angel's level of hearing, and am around four-hundred-and-fifty percent sure he heard me coming, but he doesn't react. I feel like some careless hand just shone a floodlight over the unassuming earth and shocked away all its breath, freezing it like a stupid rabbit about to get shot in the face.

Raffe, profile like some strange Michelangelo-modernisation with his hands braced against the rough brick of a well, looks as out of place here as a Disney villain stepping into a coffee shop to evaluate his life choices. He is also the realest thing I've seen in a long time.

(There's an unknown compartment around my centre torso carved with _Raffe Was Here_ and I can feel it jostling against each too-quick bump of my heart until it fizzes over like a soda can, swelling through my chest and bubbling up my bottle-neck, shaking determinedly against my locks and chains like a dog that wants off the leash and into rush hour traffic.)

I take a thoughtless step forwards. Half expect him to vanish with the movement, quick as light winking through a particular prism facet.

I stop when I'm close enough to lean my hip against the old bricks beside him. After a few beats of non-movement, I do so. More time filters through and I can maybe hear the earth resume its breathing, if only to mutter a loop of anxious breezes around our little pocket of a busted old well, a soldier girl and an angel with the devil's wings. I actually clear my throat.

His mouth and eyes both tighten more firmly shut.

At least it was a reaction. "Raffe," I say, and try to squish the smile I get for having cause to do so.

Definite reaction this time, weird as it is: his hands seem to convulse on the brickwork, tendons rising up his arms like lit fuses along the harsh hiss of his breath. He sounds like he's in pain.

I frown bemusedly. I reach for his shoulder–

Raffe jerks to face me and I snatch back my hand as if a wild animal had snapped at it. His eyes are wide and blue and both very familiar and very, very not, and I belatedly realise that Raffe is indeed in some awful kind of pain. And I can't even begin to understand why. I don't have the slightest clue of what to say – not even what to _ask_.

I don't know how long we stand there, but I get the feeling – from his parted lips and stilted breathing and the searching bewilderment that could be the mirror of my own expression – that I'm not the only one caught here, that both of us are trapped in this stretch that I can only compare to the dragging, stomach-freezing moment when you lose your footing and pitch madly on a will-you-won't-you-oh precipice before the rushed impact of ground.

Raffe's the one who breaks the lock, and he does it with a tight exhale and a palm dragging down his face and a distinctly military foot-swivel. He stalks off in the opposite direction with steps that express genuine contempt for all plant life.

My feet are so ready to move off without me I have an irrepressible need to kick the hard stone of the well as punishment to them, while the rest of me stitches jittery bits and pieces back on around my edges which barely even hurts. I feel oddly numb. I feel like I have fallen through trusted surface to be submerged in ice water.

"Hello to you too, jackass!" I throw a yell after him.

I chase after it.

And personally, I don't see a single click-and-point of any variety on the horizon.

* * *

_I would much prefer it if you were alive and __well_

* * *

**i have no idea what i'm doing with this. i have vague masochism fuelled scenes which i keep filtering through in my head and then forgetting verbiage for because i don't write it down.**

**i really love reviews though – i know, it's a shocker. a fic writer who requires feedback to sustain lifeforce – and they remind me that this fic exists to be worked upon and that you, in turn, potentially exist somewhere far out of my window to receive any such elaborations.**

**so yes your words are good words and i would like them very much.**

**and i would just quickly like to leave you with the reminder that**** at this current canonical point in time Raffe is probably emotionally obliterated because not only does he currently think Penryn is dead but he also thinks she went on her merry lossless way believing he didn't care about that or her at all. **

**okay that's it have a nice day. (: **


	2. i say hello hello hello

**if you reviewed then you should probably know that you are in yourself a good 23% of the reason this update is in perceivable existence and also that i may love you ok now you know.**

**shall we continue. **

**ahem.**

* * *

_we are like boats passing in the night -_

_particularly you_

* * *

I have no idea where we're going and Raffe is putting extra effort into being an annoying bastard by keeping it that way. In other words, his mighty seraphicness will not deign to speak to me.

Because he is, as I said, an annoying bastard.

A game at which, as any animate thing unfortunate enough to overhear us will miserably tell you, two can play.

"Hey, Raffe, is it worrying that my – your – sword talks to me in my sleep? And how bad is it that I find her weirdly attractive?"

"Hey, Raffe, why does paper beat rock in rock-paper-scissors? Because I'm pretty sure if someone tried to kill you with a brick you wouldn't really care whether or not it was in an envelope…? Thumb-wars are better. Have a thumb-war with me. Raffe."

"Hey, Raffe, why do you think that coyote from the Road Runner cartoons blew all his cash on the heavy duty explosives instead of, like, selling them to a cartel and buying himself dinner with the blood money?"

"Hey, Raffe, what _colour does a smurf turn when we choke it_?"

"Hey, Raffe. Hey. Hey, Raffe. _Raffe_. Raffe, hey."

"_Hey,_ Raffe."

Nothing.

Not so much as a, '_Shut up, Penryn, oh my God._'

Really now.

Every so often I'd lean forward as we walked, ducking in front of him to get a good look at his expression. My continued findings were that he didn't actually have one. I mean, I was used to Raffe being all self-absorbed and distant, but this… it was the face of a captured soldier awaiting enemy interrogation. A more poetic mind than mine might call it 'stone-faced,' but this particular mind is in fact mine and so I'll just tell you it creeped me _right the hell out_.

He doesn't even seem irritated with me, which is how I really know something is grievously, cosmically out of whack.

I pull back with a huff. I stop moving altogether.

Raffe doesn't so much as check his pace.

After a few stalled moments, I, being Penryn, inevitably dash to catch up with him.

Another three minutes (and I know because I'm counting) of silence trickle between us like leftover drops of condensation tracing unsurely down a glass pane. I think, _Whatever_, and hip-check him into a bush – or try to; he doesn't shift an inch.

He would've humoured me with that, before. What exactly it is that happened to slash such a cold line to separate our (comparatively fuzzy) Before to this perversely quiet, rocky Now is still unknown, and will be so long as Raffe keeps acting like he's the cool kid on the playground and I'm an overly persistent imaginary friend.

I swear to God I am this close to moving into the Are We There Yets. _This_ close.

* * *

_you will always be in my heart_

_in my mind_

_and in your grave_

* * *

As the day was dragged along before us like a weighted, silent corpse, I felt a little queasy at the saccharine decay that leaked through the evening. The last hours of colour were so bright the world seemed to be more of a backstreet-anti-depressant-cheerful edit of itself, complete with gratuitous saturation and a cheap glow-y filter. I was a little offended on my misery's behalf (if live background tracks from Three Days Grace were still unavailable even in times of bewildered loneliness, surely a girl deserved some suitable cloud cover?). But, alas, the sun bobbed its patient goodbye and the skies continued to shine loud and over-vivid as if to compensate for our bubble of impermeable gloom; all the better to look down on the bleakness it blanketed and tut to itself, I suppose.

I don't stream this thought to Raffe like I might have. I'd given up throwing words at him what must be hours ago, lapsing into a semblance of quiet and shooting thoughts into the side of his head like I was Superman and my sulking indignance was laser beams. (To no reaction from His Holiness, rest assured.) At least I was trying.

I glared until my eyes watered.

I sighed pointed sighs until I felt dizzy.

Raffe walked. I walked.

The sky unfurled as parched inkpaper, eagerly soaking up the dip of minutes to become an ordinarily ridiculous kind of contrast. Behind us, heavens smoothly chalked in violet held languorously drifting clouds, cotton-candy pink with bellies fat and golden from the sun's sleepy farewell. In front, a wide open canvas of whole and fathomless blue, deep and cool enough to make the oceans roil with envy. The world above was absorbed in a war of sorts, this palette of unnecessary colours charging to overrun one another, slow as thickened honey leaking though a fractured jar, but charging nonetheless.

When the swathe of evening sky had burned to navy, seeped dark into the very pores of the earth and swallowed up everything from the clouds to the uppermost tree branches into its inviting velvet, I barely have time to register how little I noticed the demon wings when they were attached to Raffe before he's thrown them open and launched into the air.

I reel backwards from shock, and the solid wall of wind buffeted from the power behind that leap sends me over the rest of the way, sprawling to the dirt with my gasp snatched from my mouth and then forced back down my oesophagus like a startled rabbit. I'm choking and sputtering and wiping the sting from my eyes and by the time I've half-gathered myself, enough to jerk back my head and cast about wildly in search, Raffe is gone.

The world is blacker than black, too dark too distinguish a far-off angel's form from that of a slightly closer bird. Probably too dark to distinguish either, anyway. Real, flat, _dark_.

I look into it anyway. Of course I do.

Even after my brain recovers from the shock, a stalled engine revving slightly and reminding my lungs that there was no immediate threat, no need for all this silly over-oxygenated shuddering, and to calm down, please, and telling me that my eyes were not adapted for honing in on flying prey at nighttime by only the liar lights of a few scattered stars. I curse them. My brain takes it in stride.

It's a few beats more before I even think of yelling, "_Hey!_" at the top of my traitor lungs, but only a millisecond after I think the thought I do it proud.

And only an instant later, I recall that it is the apocalypse and monsters rule this earth and it is dark and I am alone and now everything within a hundred yard radius would know it. My scream echoes through the forest, and I cringe like it's nails on a chalkboard and think_, Shutthefuckupohmigod_.

I'm being irrational. Me.

It's weird that Raffe and I seemed to operate whose turn it was to be maladjusted on a rota.

_Raffe._

I know with an ice cold set to my bones that absolutely nothing about this is rational. Not even for us. And I thought the world made no sense _before_.

I almost put my head in my hands, I almost squeeze shut my eyes against the burn of confused, furious nearly-tears. I don't because, I reiterate, it's dark and in this new world I am almost always prey, and I am loathsomely terrified.

I feel half like a chicken who claws its way out of the pot she's been marinating in only to wander into a den of starving foxes, and half like a little kid who's lost their parent in a pressing crowd of strangers.

I press my back into a tree and count my breaths with my eyes wide open. I stay there until my pulse has to choose between causing me to go into cardiac arrest or kindly slowing the hell down; I stay against that tree until I've separated every layer of sound from the hissing, creaking, snapping blanket of forest whispers, put a source to every fragment of noise; until I could draw the chance pattern of bark under my hands with perfect accuracy.

The sky stays clear. Get's darker.

I pick an unknown direction and, numbly, I walk in it.

I don't know how long for. It only felt like a very, very long while.

I don't know exactly how long it takes for him to find me for the second time in as many days.

But I know there's nothing silent about him now.

He crashes out of the sky as though he's been shot down, those lethal wings screaming against the air and swallowing up the moon. His mad fall slices through unlucky branches with creaks and snaps and whipping splinters as viciously as a bullet through bones. He lands without properly considering his legs and buckles slightly when he apparently orders them to move before they touch the floor.

I barely have time to notice this, don't have time to think/feel most the allotted stuff I might – _what's that shadow_ (dread); _an angel_ (fear)?; _sword kill grab your sword_ (relief); …_that's Raffe_ ( – ) – before he's…

He lurches over the ground between himself and my completely frozen body and then he's…_ holding_ me.

The sudden heat of him and the surprised tangle of our legs forces me back, stumblingly pliant, until I'm pressed to a tree for the second time that night. My hands had reflexively gone to his chest, although I couldn't tell you whether they wanted to shove away or pull closer here, and because of that I know that this time it's his heart that needs the help slowing. It jolts unevenly against my palms, both of them, the hum stuttering through his entire chest like some angry fist pounding out a rhythmless beat too strong, too fast to be human. Even only pressed against it, I feel like my chest is bruising from the assault.

It takes me a few seconds to focus on his breathing, barely any slower than his heartbeat and ragged as though he'd run a marathon. It's sending hot embers curling across my throat. Raffe's face is in my neck and he's gasping into me as though I'm oxygen and he's a drowning man.

Distantly I realise I'm not even sure how this position is working, since I'm so damned short and he's epitome-of-literal-heavenly-perfection tall. And then I notice that my feet aren't on the ground. He's holding me really, really tightly. I tell him so.

He jerks back immediately. I would have dropped if not for the fact that Raffe doesn't actually move back far enough to give me room, and still I've barely caught up against him before he's there again like some kind of reluctant magnet. His hands, careful now, re-snake around my waist fleetingly only to run up my ribs and down again, ghosting over my hips and almost, almost hitching up behind my knees before retreating, just skimming the hem of my shirt on the way up – are those hands _shaking?_ – and their lightest insistence has my arms looped around his neck before he follows the circuit again. He can't seem to decide the best place for his hands, so he's choosing everywhere.

I can't think, and I know that isn't the reason the world seems to make less and less sense with every passing minute. (So long as we're making a list, I can't breathe, either, and it's only half because of the solid weight that binds me into a tree and more to do with who was doing the binding.)

I blink, hard, and manage to lever a few tenuous inches of breathing space between us. I try to bob around and get a look at Raffe's face – I can't begin to imagine an expression to go with this, least of all from him – but he seems determined to keep it firmly hidden at my throat. The sliver of clear air between us works like a wash of cool water seeping through my tired skin. I barely hear my startled, rabbit-quick breaths slow unnoticed under his ragged gasping which is taking him longer to rein in. I haven't seen Raffe's celestial-fit form betray him like this since that one bleak night where he believed he had watched me die.

I've already called that there is something very wrong here, but believe me when I tell you it's worth repeating.

Raffe's hands aren't just touching. They're kneading me. Squeezing along my arms at precise intervals as though he half-expects my bones to crumble under his presses.

I have no idea what to do with this Raffe anymore than I would with one who eviscerated small animals or would only wear clothes of tangerine latex.

So very carefully, I drop my hands to hover over his. They still immediately.

More careful still, like I'm dealing with a skittish creature rather than a man(-shaped being), I trail my own hands up over the sinews of his arms, his shoulders, curl my palms at his throat and press back until I can see his face. His eyes are shut tight as though he's in deep concentration.

Unsure and probably a liar, I say, "Hey. It's alright."

He laughs once, pitched high, and it's the saddest sound I've ever heard.

I watch tendons jump as Raffe works his jaw in an attempt to grind out further involuntary outburst.

"You were gone," he manages eventually. His voice is so quiet I have to strain to hear it, so quiet I'm half-sure he doesn't want me to. "Penryn. I lost you."

"Uh_, yah,"_ I reply, throwing a loose fist into his stomach (and decidedly choosing to _not_ notice the way he recoils as though expecting the force of a wrecking ball behind it). He steps back. I'm glad, I tell myself. I can think clearer now. "That kinda happens when you fly off into the frickin' sunset and leave me behind."

He back-steps again, jerkily. Looks down to obscure the curious twisting in his face under the dimlight. "I'm- I'm very –_ sorry_." He sounds strange. Constricted, almost.

Still, I've not quite forgiven him for abandoning me in a more-than-likely cannibal infested forest in the pitch dark all by my lonesome. I lock my own jaw. "Well. Me and my rock friends'll be using you for target practice if you do it again."

"No, no," he says reflexively.

Eyes narrowed, I glare down my nose at him. "Promise you'll walk."

_To where?_ I don't know. But damn if he's not taking me with him.

And Raffe looks at me. Really_ looks_. His eyes are abruptly flat, reflecting the cold moon like the surface of a still lake might, the depths as obscured and unreadable as they would have been in our Before period. That unmovable gaze scans over me boot to hair and sends hailstones skittering through my limbs. He darts a glance to the upward northeast. Back at me. Repeats the process.

"Raffe." Now I sound strange.

He doesn't blink, but those eyes squeeze painfully shut once more. Needing to shatter something – the lull, this spell, that awful _stillness_ – I sidestep sharply.

"_Raf-"_

His eyes – _snap –_ open. "_I promise._"

I stall. "You'll… stay with me?" Immediately I want to suck the words back; they came out wrong, too soft too soft–

"Yes." He swallows. "Yeah. Penryn. I'm with you."

And I nod. Awkward at the rough tenor of his syllables as they spill into the unstirred night air, at the raptor focus he still has on my face as though he's waiting for me to crack open or try to crack _him_ open at any second, I say, "Alright."

And we walk.

* * *

_when we first met, you were pretty and I was lonely_

_now I am pretty lonely_

* * *

**well then.**

**also someone needs to write something for this ship because i swear i am going to fly off the handle, i am going to backflip off the fuckin handle and land on something expensive while screaming both sides of Raffryn banter like some hideously unhinged ventriloquist acrobat, if i don't get some second-hand verbal release over here. do you understand i think you might.**

**(feedback = fixing = deep soul-lifting joy = motivation = further verbal scribblings. if you're, like, interested. or something. ah.)**


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